A dramatic enactment of that record-breaking sub-four-minute mile at the
Iffley Road running track in Oxford has been organised to mark the Olympic
Games.

Is it art or sport? A bit of both, probably. To the extent that The Story of the Four Minute Mile is performed by actors before an audience who have bought tickets, you would have to call it a theatrical production. But when did a theatre audience last have to walk three circuits (about three quarters of a mile) of a standard athletics track and, on the instruction, “Ready, Steady, Go!”, muster the energy to sprint the final lap?

There are all kinds of artistic events taking place in conjunction with the London Olympics, but none wackier than this Oxford Playhouse production, staged at the Iffley Road running track where, on May 6, 1954, Sir Roger Bannister became the first man to run the sub-four-minute mile.

When I and the rest of the audience have filed in from the car park, we are ushered on to the track, divided into groups and subjected to a barrage of gripping factoids about Bannister, his ambition and his courage, as we walk round and round the course in his footsteps.

Though this modern track is smarter than the one Bannister would have run, it’s hardly state of the art. Iffley Road is in an unfashionable part of Oxford, and the track is backed by a scruffy grass bank, beyond which one can just see the top of a church tower, squat and unremarkable. You wouldn’t look at it twice. But as The Story of the Four Minute Mile unfolds, inventively told by an enthusiastic cast of four, we learn that the St George’s flag on top of the tower earned a glorious footnote in history.

Bannister and his pacemakers, Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway, knew the record would only be worth targeting if weather conditions were perfect. When they arrived in Oxford, there was a stiff wind, so the situation looked hopeless. Then, 10 minutes before the race, the flag on the church tower went limp...

As the performance continues we learn other fascinating snippets such as, at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, Bannister was beaten into fourth place. If he had got gold, he was planning to retire from athletics and concentrate on his medical studies. But disappointment spurred him to greater efforts.

Lady Bannister, Sir Roger’s wife, with whom he still lives in Oxford, is attending the performance with some of her family. “Were you here that day?” I ask her. “Sadly, not,” she says. “I had only met Roger two weeks before, so I was in London. I learnt about it on the radio.” In fact, there were only 1,200 people in the stadium to witness the triumph (including his parents, who did not tell him they were coming, in case they disturbed his preparations).

But one audience member was there in 1954. Local resident Barbara Strongitharm tells me that, as a 14-year-old, she and her younger brother were taken to the event by their father. She has the original programme to prove it, with the winners of every event recorded in her neat schoolgirl’s hand.

Unlike the (unnamed) Oxford boy who told his father he was going to watch the Bannister race, but bunked off and spent the afternoon canoodling with his girlfriend – his wry memoirs are also incorporated into the performance – Barbara was in the right place at the right time.

So many stories. Such a wonderful stroll down Memory Lane. But then, for the able-bodied at least, this gentle stroll becomes a sprint, as we attempt the final (quarter of a mile) lap that Bannister would have run, heart pounding, lungs bursting, legs screaming, with nothing to keep him going but willpower and sheer bloody-mindedness. He didn’t want an American or Australian to break the record. He wanted to do it himself.

Over half a century later, I puff and wheeze my way around the 400-metre circuit, and, with a time of one minute 45 seconds, am just outside the current world record – for 800 metres. For a middle-aged man accustomed to a sedentary lifestyle, it is hard work. I can feel bones creaking and, after just half a lap, I’m gasping for breath. Why am I doing this when I could be in the pub? But the adrenalin rush as I breast the tape, with the ghosts of the past watching, is unmistakable.

As the original 1954 announcement is replayed, I can feel the hairs standing up on the back of my neck. “First, R G Bannister, of the Amateur Athletic Association... in a time which, subject to ratification, will be a new English, British, European, British Empire and World Record. The time is three...”

The exact time, three minutes 59.4 seconds, was drowned by the crowd’s cheers. But it is there in the record books, and it is there on Barbara Strongitharm’s programme – an imperishable memento of the day her father took her down the Iffley Road to an athletics meeting on the off-chance that history would be made.

There will be further performances of 'The Story of the Four Minute Mile’, an Oxford Playhouse production, on May 11, 12 and 13. Adults, £8; discounts, £5